Sweet Dreams
by DownToTheSea
Summary: Helen and Nikola, attempting to get a peaceful night's sleep in between Sanctuary crises.


**A/N:** **For Teslen week day six: "Electricity." After the last one I felt like something really tooth-rotting XD Enjoy!**

* * *

A loud, insistent buzzing woke Nikola up from the pleasant dream he'd been having. The details escaped him instantly, but he was sure it had involved Helen – most of his good dreams did – and that he had just been getting to a particularly good part before being so rudely awakened.

His annoyance at the buzzing deepened when Helen, previously curled up around him, rolled over and flung a hand out at the intercom panel on her bedside table. Nikola hadn't even opened his eyes yet, but he could feel the rush of cold air replace Helen's warmth at his back. With a disgruntled noise, he turned over and attempted to follow it to her side of the bed, forcing his bleary eyes open.

From what little he could see of the artificial sky outside Helen's window, it was too dark to properly be called "morning." The clock on her dresser read 5:07, which meant that Nikola had gotten about an hour of sleep since falling into bed after a late nighter in his laboratory. (He might not have even bothered coming to bed at all, since courtesy of Helen the couch in his lab was quite comfortable if he needed to snatch a few hours' rest, but the pleasures of waking up next to her outweighed pretty much everything else.)

"Magnus here." Helen's voice sounded a little hoarse from her abrupt awakening.

Nikola's endeavours to reclaim a bit of warmth finally paid off as he rolled into Helen, wrapping an arm around her waist and nuzzling her neck with a satisfied sigh. His eyes flickered closed again. Helen let out a soft huff of breath that might have been a tired chuckle before the intercom came to life.

"Hey, doc," Henry's voice was loud in the silence of their room, and sounded almost as tired as Nikola felt. "So, you know the energy beetles from Cairo? Another one got out, and he gnawed through some kinda important stuff in the generator room before I got the alert on my tablet. I found him and he's all safe and sound, but the power's down."

Ever since coming down to Hollow Earth, they seemed to run into such problems about once a week. Of course, things had been like that at the old Sanctuary too. Nikola wasn't quite sure why he'd thought things would change here.

Helen groaned. "Is the backup power working at least?"

"Yeah, but it got damaged too. I'd say we have maybe an hour before it goes."

"I take it the main generator can't be fixed in less than an hour."

"Sorry, doc."

Blinking the sleep out of her eyes, Helen sat up, ignoring Nikola's mumbles of protest as she slipped out of his arms once more.

"How long will it take?"

Henry's shrug was practically audible. "Two hours, probably."

Helen pinched her nose and nodded. "Very well. I'll be down to help you shortly. Nikola, do you think you can keep us running until we fix the generator?"

He sighed. Apparently warmth and sleep weren't going to be on the menu for a while.

* * *

It was closer to three and a half hours later by the time Nikola made it back to their room. Despite essentially using himself as an energy source to keep the Sanctuary online until the main generator came back online, he wasn't really much more tired than he had been to begin with. He had only needed to keep the emergency systems running, which he could do without even breaking a sweat, and the old familiar feeling of electricity coursing through him was pure delight. Still, that exhilaration had pretty much worn off, and he was looking forward to getting a few more hours of sleep and perhaps catching the rest of that dream.

As he closed the door, he caught sight of Helen lying in bed, already fast asleep. One arm was hugging the pillow, a habit which Nikola found delightful, usually because he was often on the receiving end of that same instinct. He had woken up to find Helen squeezing him tight against her more times than he could count. As much as he liked to tease her about it when she woke up, he could have wriggled out if he'd really wanted to, but Nikola wasn't a big fan of willingly leaving Helen's arms.

He went about getting ready for bed as quietly as he could, but to no avail; Helen was a light sleeper. Her eyes were open by the time he sat down on the bed next to her.

"Good morning, my dear." Nikola bent over and kissed her forehead. "Ok, maybe not especially good, but at least we averted another Sanctuary crisis, thanks to our combined brilliance."

Her lips twitched. "If you are quite done patting yourself on the back, you're welcome to join me. I gave Henry the rest of the day off, but he refused to accept until I had taken it myself as well."

"You didn't give _me_ the day off."

Helen yawned. "Because I knew you would take it regardless. Now are you going to keep talking, or come to bed?"

"Well I would love to, but…" Nikola leaned down to whisper in her ear. "My side of the bed seems to be occupied. Miss me?"

Helen's face gave nothing away as she detached herself from his pillow and scooted back to make room for him. Grinning, he got in bed and pulled the blankets up over both of them.

A wave of his hand was all that was needed to turn the lights out. Thankfully, he didn't need to go in search of warmth this time; Helen had apparently decided to replace her pillow with a rather chilly but affectionate vampire. She made herself comfortable on top of him, nestling a little into his chest. Nikola had no objections, and folded his own arms around her with a contented sigh.

"Thank you for your assistance today, Nikola," she said, voice muffled in his shirt. "It could have been much worse if you hadn't kept the power going."

"Anything for you, dearest Helen." Nikola closed his eyes, listening to her breathe for a moment before adding, "Though being a living battery isn't exactly the most thrilling of tasks, so maybe next time you can assign me to something more heroic."

She chuckled. "I'll take that under advisement."

One of his hands idly stroked her back, and she sighed quietly, pressing a kiss just over his heart.

"In fact I think you owe me some ancient ruins, you know, as a bonus."

"Oh? Did you have any particular ancient ruins in mind?" Helen asked, laughing and raising herself up on her elbow.

"I'm sure I'll think of something." Nikola opened his eyes and gave Helen a dazzling smile. "After a few hours of beauty sleep. How could I ever run out of places to explore with my dear Helen?"

She shook her head, but there was a smile pulling at her lips, and she leaned down to kiss him softly on the cheek before snuggling back against his chest.

"Of course, we could do other sorts of exploring, if you wanted," he said after a moment.

Helen snorted. "I thought you needed your beauty sleep."

"I like to keep my mind open to new possibilities."

"Mmm… Maybe tomorrow." Helen sounded rather sleepy.

Nikola kissed her hair. "Good night, Helen," he said softly.

"Good night, Nikola," she mumbled.

"See you in the morning." With a final kiss, he closed his eyes and let Helen's warm embrace carry him off to sleep.


End file.
